Is mental illness an excuse for bad behaviour?

[WomanWithoutTheMan]

Similarly, is a bad childhood an excuse too?

Maybe FWR isn't the right place for this. At the same time, I often read about women being emotionally-blackmailed into forgiving their abusers because their abuser has a mental illness or traumatic past.

Mental illness and bad upbringings seem to be taken into account when abusers are sentenced too.

One of my best friends was badly abused as a child. Luckily she has managed to recover as much as possible. However, for years she was told that whilst the abuse wasn't her fault, it wasn't her abusers either. He himself had a bad childhood and was an alcoholic, which many people thought was an excuse for his disgusting behaviour. Because of this, my friend was always told that she had to forgive him. Personally, my sympathy for that man's addiction and childhood stopped when he abused my friend, but maybe I'm too hard-arsed?

@howard97A

“Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.”

Definitely not.

I remember being told at some point that mental illness/bad childhood/addiction etc could be “an explanation, but not an excuse”.

So it may be helpful to understand where behaviour comes from, but that understanding just explains the root of the behaviour. It doesn’t excuse it. You don’t have to forgive, you don’t have to tolerate it, and the individual doesn’t get to carry on.

Well it would entirely depend on the illness and the behaviour. Someone with dementia is entirely unable to control the distressed behaviours that can be very challenging for staff to deal with. That may include sexually disinhibition, aggressive responses and taking items belonging to others.
People with other forms of acute delirium may have unwanted behaviours.

People who are addicted often cannot help behaviour that is unacceptable to others. Stealing and lying to gain the substance they crave.

People who have psychotic illness may exhibit unwanted behaviours if they suffer from episodes of mania. That can include self harm and high risk behaviours.

So yes, mental illness can be a reason. I think you mean can non-psychotic illness such as low level depression or controlled illness make people difficult or unkind? That’s a different question entirely and the answer would be entirely situation dependent.

It was something I struggled with my abusive ex. I know he had a serious mental illness and tried very hard to support him, and as a result became very conflicted around what behaviour was and wasn’t acceptable, to the extent I became ill myself.

That was a real turning point for me, as he told me outright he couldn’t give me any support as he was too ill but if I wasn’t totally supportive of him all hell would break lose. He also insisted that it was ok to take risks with the mine and the children’s safety to prevent his illness getting worse. It was real headfuckery. I moved out temporarily with the kids, and asked his family for support on getting help for him.

Their response was to ask what I had done to upset him and told he just needed me to go back with the children so we could all be together and that would help him get better.

I took court action against him last year and was granted occupation and non molestation orders, and he has been cautioned by the police for harassment. He and his family still insist he was just ill and I should have stuck by him.

This is one of the reasons why people with mental illness are much more likely to be victims of abuse. People with mental illness (particular those who want to get better) are very vulnerable to gaslighting, and can easily be made to believe that they're the problem. I think it's very possible for the partner with mental illness to be the one being abused, but to believe that they are the one causing problem.

Yes, this is important to remember. A study undertaken in 2014 found that 1 in 5 women had a common mental health problem and 1 in 8 men had the same mental health problem and the numbers for women increased between 2000 and 2014.

www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics/mental-health-statistics-men-and-women

I have just had training around collective trauma looking at Covid and it's impact. The thing that stood out to me was how perceptions matter on how people handle trauma. It's not about how you actually handle the trauma, it is how you perceive you are handling it that effects the outcome. I guess this is where resilience comes in again.

Your op raises two questions for me. Firstly, why is it that women are so easily gaslighted into thinking that men’s bad experiences are so much worse and more important than their own. So many women suffer from sex based harassment or violence, yet somehow don’t go on to mete that same level of violence out.

Secondly what application should this intellectual question about root causes of disaffection have on the entirely practical and pragmatic need to keep people safe on the streets? None whatsoever would be my answer.